Top 5 Thrillers That Push Us to the Edge of Our Psyche for March

Original post was written for Vudu and can be found on blog.vudu.com

Swallow is a unique gem of a thriller you may not know about yet. But there’s lots of reasons you should. Critics are buzzing about Haley Bennett’s performance as a modern-day housewife, eagerly striving to be perfect in every role: wife, daughter-in-law, and soon-to-be mother. On the surface her life seems immaculate. But soon the immense pressure of these rigid expectations proves to be too much to handle. When the darkness of her past comes back to haunt her, the veil falls and reveals her true, vulnerable, imperfect self. Watch Bennett’s transformation in Swallow – just beware it may be a little hard to stomach.  

Swallow shows us a glimpse at how far we will go when we’re pushed far enough. And there are other thought-provoking psychological thrillers that do the same in their own unique way. Whether we’re denying reality to the point of insanity, or striving for perfection to the point we become inhuman. The limits are endless and the consequences are dire. These films take a look at the fragility of the human psyche and the sinister places it can take us when we break.  

Black Swan

Natalie Portman won a Golden Globe and Academy Award for her performance as Nina in Black Swan. The themes in the film parallel Swallow, as the story follows her journey to become a perfect ballet performer in Swan Lake. She needs to embody both innocence and sensuality as the White Swan and Black Swan, but Nina is timid and inexperienced, so she struggles with the latter. But she refuses to let that stop her. Hard work and perseverance take her to extreme places that are sometimes hard to stomach. Nina takes on an emotional, mental, and physical transformation as she relentlessly and mercilessly pushes herself to become the perfect dancer. And Portman took the role very seriously. She took dance lessons for a year and worked with a voice coach to give her a more child-like voice to fully embody Nina’s innocent character. Portman’s dedication really comes through in this visually stunning film, and its approach will make you question how far you’d be willing to go to achieve perfection. 

The Devil’s Advocate

This star-studded film featuring Al Pacino, Keanu Reeves, and Charlize Theron is a must-see for any thriller lover. The Devil’s Advocate follows a successful lawyer from a small town who’s offered the opportunity of a lifetime to practice in New York City. Kevin, played by Reeves, quickly becomes massively successful and spends more time at work with his big-time boss John Milton, played by Pacino. Temptation and greed soon take over his psyche and we start to wonder who Kevin really is. We see him transform from a good, hard-working husband to a cold man with questionable character. But is that transformation worth the cost? The film takes an interesting look at morality and how fragile it becomes when you’re handed everything you’ve ever wanted. And it’s a definite must-see. 

 The Machinist

The Machinist is an ominous thriller starring the talented Christian Bale. The story follows Trevor, who suffers from insomnia and becomes emaciated as a result. He’s deemed an outsider by almost everyone he knows. Left to deal with his paranoid mind in isolation, Trevor slowly unravels and we’re taken along on the daunting trip to figure out why he can never sleep. The film can be uncomfortable to watch, especially with how malnourished Bale appears. He fully immersed himself in the role, going as far as crash-dieting and taking up smoking to lose 63 pounds. He was so weakened by the emaciation that he had difficulty running when filming action scenes for the film. His dedication is unparalleled, and the film is worth watching for his performance alone. This movie shows what our conscience will do to our psyche when guilt takes over and reality is too painful to bear. It’s an ominous journey worth taking. 

Prisoners

Prisoners shows how far a father will go to protect his child. The star-studded cast in the film includes Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis and many more. On a seemingly normal day, Keller Dover’s six-year-old daughter and her friend suddenly go missing. Utter panic among the families ensues. Detective Loki, played by Gyllenhaal, is tasked with helping Dover, played by Jackman, to find the child and the kidnapper. When they finally home in on a suspect, they lack sufficient evidence to arrest him. This is where Keller takes justice into his own hands. Frantic and utterly desperate, Keller sees no limits when it comes to finding his daughter. The film makes us question our certainty about what’s right and wrong, as we perceive Keller go back and forth between a brave hero and a heartless monster. This intense journey will leave you wondering how far you would go to protect the ones you love. 

Bring Home the Laughs and Lessons with Sonic the Hedgehog

Original post was written for Vudu and can be found on blog.vudu.com

The long-awaited Sonic the Hedgehog has finally made it to our living rooms! This little, blue-guy is taking you on an adventure full of plenty of silliness and laughs. The movie’s video game origins will get older adults excited about its nostalgia, and the humor in the movie brings everyone in the family together for a good time. And while Sonic may be an alien from another planet, he is also here to teach us some important lessons about what it means to be human too. 

SONIC’S SEGA (AND INTERNET) ROOTS AMP UP THE NOSTALGIA

We can’t talk about how Sonic the Hedgehog came to be without bringing up Sega and the Internet. Sonic originated from the Sega Genesis games that first came onto the scene in the early 90s. Those who grew up playing the games will be excited to see that the movie pays homage to the video games with a number of references. For example, Sonic sports his signature red shoes from the game that help him go fast as he fights off the evil Robotnik (who also originated in the games). Sonic also collects the classic rings that OG gamers are familiar with, and even eats plenty of his favorite food from the game – hot dogs. 

Check out even more references to the classic Sonic games that you don’t want to miss in this exclusive clip: 

And while the video game originally inspired the film, the Internet also helped shape the movie in an unprecedented way. When the trailer first appeared online, the game fans weren’t exactly thrilled with how different Sonic looked from his beloved Sega roots. So they did what the Internet does best – made tons of memes roasting the design. And to everyone’s surprise, the studio took the criticism and gave Sonic the redesign everyone was asking for. Sonic finally got his signature large eyes, bigger teeth, and proportional body shape. From origins to completion, Sonic’s Sega fans had a hand in making the movie happen. That alone is a cool movie history moment to witness. And moving beyond the creation, the filmmakers just made a movie that’s just fun to watch for adults and kids thanks to the talent. 

JIM CARREY KEEPS THE LAUGHS COMING 

Jim Carrey stars as the infamous Eggman/Dr. Robotnik in the movie. We’ve seen Carrey in mostly over-the-top roles in movies like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Dumb and Dumber. In Sonic he takes his signature Carrey “out there”-ness down a bit and replaces it with tons of bad guy sass. 

As the epitome of evil, endlessly condescending genius, Carrey hits all the marks while keeping things lighthearted and funny. He is mean to literally everyone (except his precious robots of course) since they’re never smart enough to satisfy him. Everything he says is a quippy insult or a sassy remark that is witty enough for both adults and kids to appreciate. Of course, his signature look adds to his evil villain style too. His giant goggles and strong mustache give him a balance of commanding and ridiculous at the same time, making him the perfect villain for a lighthearted family adventure. We can’t help but see Tom and Jerry parallels watching the chase between Robotnik and Sonic throughout the movie and that’s just a blast to watch. 

But it’s not just the animation, talent, and humor that make Sonic the Hedgehog a great family movie. Sonic actually teaches us some worthwhile lessons about the importance of friendship too.  

WE ALL NEED SOMEBODY TO LEAN ON 

When we first meet Sonic, we quickly realize he spends a lot of time alone. Since he is an alien, he can’t be seen by any humans without risking his safety. So he’s forced to watch everyone from afar and find different ways to entertain himself. Through the movie, we see Sonic play ping pong by himself and even play baseball alone. He even spends his nights watching movies through the window of Tom’s house before they meet. And although this is fun at first, Sonic always comes to the same conclusion: he wishes he had a friend. Through the movie this theme comes back over and over – Sonic has spent years watching humanity be together, and his need for companionship on planet Earth is real. That’s why meeting Tom changes everything. 

Tom is very reluctant to help Sonic at their first encounter. After all, Sonic a little alien stranger and Tom has plenty going on in his own life. But eventually, Tom agrees to take Sonic across the country, even with nothing to gain. Thanks to Tom’s willingness to be kind, the two grow close as they go on their journey and fight off Robotnik. As they face more hardships and get to know each other on their adventure, they start to develop a real friendship. Not only does this make Sonic happy, but this friendship even helps save their lives. And in the end, Tom gains an unexpected little hedgehog friend too. 

So while Sonic is an alien from a different planet, he reminds us of some really important lessons in being human – help those in need, be kind, and remember that we all need somebody to lean on. 

Introducing Lists: Organize Your Digital Movie and TV Library The Way You Want

Original post was written for Vudu and can be found on blog.vudu.com

Customized lists are here! At Vudu, we love our movie and TV collection as much as you love yours, so we’re excited to launch Lists and give you the ability to customize how you organize and display your collection. 

What can I do with Lists? 

Lists gives you the power to create custom Lists and group your movies and TV shows by franchise, decade, mood, or anything else – so you can keep what you want together and start watching faster.  Create a List for Marvel, or DC, or combine them into a superhero super-list. Create a List to keep all your 80’s nostalgia, your family favorites, or to keep your zombie horror from infecting your vampire dramas – the options are endless and entirely up to you.

You are no longer limited to viewing your movies by their release date or alphabetical order. Lists allows you to customize your movies and TV just the way you want and make your collection personal again.

How do I create a list? 

Creating a List is easy. Look for ‘Lists’ under the ‘My Vudu’ menu. Click on ‘Create New List’ and you can start adding to your List. Just click on individual titles you want to add to your List, or bulk upload several titles at once. You can also put the same titles in different Lists. If you’re not sure whether to add Fight Club to your ‘Favorite Books Turned Movies ‘ List or ‘Worst Oscar Snubs Ever’ List, simply add it to both Lists because you can. Once you’ve created your perfect List, you can also customize the order your titles appear in in each List. That way you can spend less time searching and more time watching. 

Get started

You can create a List for any occasion, collection, or mood. We even created a Star Wars List to help you get inspired. Add to it, check out all you can do with it, and then start creating Lists that are uniquely you. 

Share your Lists with us using the hashtag #MyVuduLists on Twitter and Instagram, and we will feature the most creative standouts that inspired us!

Here are some unique List creations from our own Vudu employees to help get you started: 

Good Cop / Bad Cop – Movies featuring actors who play a wholesome hero in one film and an evil villain in the next.

• Robin Williams in Patch Adams (good cop) and One Hour Photo (bad cop)

• Charlize Theron in Mighty Joe Young (good) and Monster (bad)

• Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (good) and Sonic the Hedgehog (bad)

• Meryl Streep in Doubt (good) and The Devil Wears Prada (bad)

Dystopian Commentary – thought-provoking movies & shows featuring scenarios of what could go wrong in a dystopian world. 

• The Lobster 

• Idiocracy 

• The Handmaid’s Tale 

• A.I. Artificial Intelligence

• The Giver 

• Demolition Man 

• 1984 

• Gattaca 

Lists are the perfect way to organize your movie collections exactly the way you want to. So why not have fun with it? We can’t wait to see what Lists you create!

6 Data Outages And Lessons Learned From 2016

Original post was written for Zetta and can be found on Zetta.com

Data outages can have a major impact on businesses of all sizes and across all industries. This year we witnessed a number of major outages at large companies and the consequences of the downtime.

According to our State of Disaster Recovery survey of 2016, the number one cause of IT downtime is still power outages. Most of the outages on our list were also caused by power outages, so that reaffirms the trend. Hardware error came in at a close second at 52%. Our survey also revealed the cost and frequency of downtime events. According to our survey, more than half of companies report that they have experienced a downtime event that lasted more than 8 hours in the past five years. In the event of an outage, 67% estimate that their business would lose 20k for every day of downtime. Depending on the business, that could end it for good. But how were the major companies you heard about in the news in 2016 impacted by their data outages and downtime?

1. Twitter

Twitter’s year started off with some big headaches, to say the least. In January Twitter experienced a severe data outage. Hundreds of millions of users all over the world were unable to access the social networking service through any of their devices for several hours.

When Twitter users attempted to access the network, they saw an error message reading “network is over capacity” and “internal error. According to Twitter, a recent code change caused the technical problem. Throughout the day, users were unable to share updates in addition to being unable to access the website. Four of the five public APIs were brought down because of this code change, which is why so many users were impacted.

Though Twitter resolved this issue after a few hours, the price of their stock was actually significantly impacted by the incident. The day of the outage, stock prices dropped down to $16.43, down nearly 7% from its opening price. Even months after recovering from the outage, stock prices still haven’t recovered to where they were before the outage.

2. Amazon Web Services

On June 4th, Amazon Web Services experienced some significant outages in Sydney Australia, bringing down a number of major websites and possibly affecting customers who were unable to complete financial transactions at stores.

EC2 instances and EBs volumes in the region experienced a loss of power. This led to increased errors and latencies for the websites that use AWS. There were major storms hitting the area at this time, which some speculate may have caused the data outage, though Amazon denies storms to be the cause. The downtime ended up lasting several hours before it was resolved.  

Quite a few websites were impacted by this outage. Websites included car sharing service Go Get, online streaming platforms like Stan, ticketing platforms like TryBooking and food ordering services like Menulog. Customers in stores were left stranded and unable to process their payments or withdraw money from ATMs, though a number of them later confirmed that their payments were not processed by AWS and they were not to blame. No matter the case, this downtime event really demonstrates how much we rely on data to be available to us in our daily lives and how critical it is that companies take precautions to minimize events like these. A Cloud Disaster Recovery solution can help minimize the effect of such an event.

3. Comcast Business Phone Service

On July 13th telecom company Comcast’s Business Phone Service experienced serious outages which affected more than 950,000 of their small business customers throughout the U.S.

This was another downtime event caused by a power outage. According to Comcast, the outage was caused by an issue in their networking.   

Outages were seen all across the U.S. during the data outage event. At one point complaints in Denver were up to 300 an hour.

Small business customers were unable to make or receive phone calls during the outage, so their businesses were impacted by not having such a critical line of communication with their customers.

4. Southwest Airlines

On July 20th Southwest Airlines experienced a massive 4 day-long outage, which lead them to delay over 2,000 flights and costing them between $54 million and $82 million in loss of revenue.

A router failed and triggered other crashes, slowing down the airline’s systems. This eventually led to other functions being overloaded and freezing. Though router failures are fairly common, this instance had severe consequences. Unfortunately, the backup system and DR deployments they had in place also failed, which added to the downtime.

Passengers were left stranded at airports across the country, since they were unable to check in for their flights or get their boarding passes at the kiosks. Customers ended up having to cancel their flights and miss bookings, which is estimated to be a $25 million loss for Southwest Airlines. Stranded travelers who needed hotel and meal accommodations, as well as employee overtime are estimated to total between $28 million and $57 million in losses. The outage could end up costing the company nearly 82$ million in revenue, and some deem it to be the worst outage in the airline’s history.

Southwest Airline’s stocks also saw a significant drop after the outage.  

5. Delta Airlines

On August 8th, 2016 Delta Airlines passengers experienced some major inconveniences, to say the least. Customers were unable to get their boarding passes or get checked in to get on their flights. This was the beginning of a 3 day outage for the airline, and would eventually lead to 2,300 flight cancellations and $150 million in losses pre-tax income.

The massive outage was caused by a circuit breaker that needed to be reset in their Atlanta headquarters. This caused the transformer to shut down, so the power to their data center was shut down. The systems were moved to their backup power, but not all of the servers were connected to that source, causing the cascading issues. Some also speculate that the Delta outage was caused by a cyber attack.

Customers immediately took to Downdetector and  began reporting their issues.

Delta Airlines’ $150 million loss is massive, but they also suffered other consequences. Their customers were outraged and their reputation was also seriously impacted. Of the 167 complaints filed with the U.S. Department of transportation, 92 of them dealt with this outage. Travelers will likely think twice before booking a flight with Delta, especially those who were stranded for hours as a result.

6. SSP Worldwide

SSP Worldwide, an insurance software house, experienced a 10 day outage in the UK in September. The outage had a major impact on their business and their customers.

The power outage occurred on August 26th was caused by a blackout that hit SSP’s Solihull Data Center. The outage fried the HPE Storage Area Network. The data center was doing daily backups from backup discs, re-coupling it with application data, and finally reconfiguring the systems for individual customers. A number of the disks were also damaged because of the power loss disruption, which added to the complexity and time it took for them to recover.

Customers and insurance brokers were unable to access SSP services during this period, which caused a number of issues. The downtime limited the amount of work the insurance brokers could do and ended up costing them business, including losing clients who were too impatient to wait for the problem to be resolved. The outage had serious ramifications for their customers as well. 40% of the insurance brokers use the services to remind their customers when it’s time to reinsure their vehicles. The outage meant that these customers weren’t getting notified their insurance was running out, and were potentially uninsured without even knowing it. This was a serious liability issue for the business and could’ve caused problems for their uninsured customers as well.  

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Data Vulnerabilities: Is Your Data Protected

With everything that we’ve seen go wrong with this year’s data outages, how can you ensure that your data is protected in the event of a disaster? The first step is disaster recovery planning. Hoping for the best in a bad situation simply won’t cut it.

Make sure you have a documented DR plan in the event of a disaster. That means knowing what your RPO and RTO is. Your RPO is your recovery point objective and your RTO is your recovery time objective. You need to know how long you can be without your data and how much data you are okay with losing in the event of a disaster. Testing your DR plan is also a critical part of DR planning (link to DR planning ebook here), though most IT pros still neglect to test their plants more than once a year. 2 in 5 companies don’t have a DR plan at all.

You also need to send your backups offsite on a regular basis. This is because in the event that a disaster strikes your building, you don’t want the only copy of your data to be in that building. Cloud backup solutions ensure that the data is offsite at all time, since being in the cloud is automatically considered offsite. For the most stringent RTOs, disaster recovery as a service will allow you to failover in the cloud quickly following a disaster. That way you can continue running business operations until you recover you data from the cloud.

Secure Backup Solution

According to our State of DR survey, one in three IT pros have been hit by a virus or malware attack. Unfortunately, cyber attacks will continue to rise. Businesses must keep up with the latest in data security to lessen their chances of being attacked. Seeking out a backup and disaster recovery solution that’s secure will become even more critical.  

Make sure to ask your backup provider about their business, technical, and process controls. Limited access to data, data encryption in flight and at rest, and ongoing log and security reviews are just a few security measures to keep in mind. If you work in industries like healthcare or finance, there are certain government regulations like HIPAA and SOX that you need to abide by. Many of these regulations are set help protect client privacy and add extra layers of security, so seeking out a solution that’s able to meet those backup compliance rules is a must.

Is Your Cloud Backup Secure? Important Factors to Consider

Original post was written for Zetta and can be found on Zetta.com

More businesses are starting to trust the cloud as a viable backup choice for their critical data. What is driving that shift? Perceptions around cloud backup security are gradually starting to change. But unfortunately, not all cloud backup providers utilize the same degree of data security and integrity.

There are three major criteria you need to consider when you’re evaluating the security standards of a cloud backup vendor for your business: compliance, authorization procedures, and data availability.

Is your cloud backup provider industry-compliant?

If your business is part of a regulated industry, you know that meeting compliance requirements for your data is a top security priority. If you manage the data of a healthcare organization, for example, meeting standards set forth by the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a must. These practices include signing a business associate agreement, ongoing auditing, data encryption practices and more. In order to maintain compliance you have to be aware of HIPAA standards and ask your cloud backup provider for documentation on how they are able to meet them.

If you are seeking to find a secure cloud backup solution as a financial service company, you also need to abide by legal standards defined by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). Part of those standards include comprehensive data encryption and specialized data retention policies depending on business needs. It’s essential that you ask your cloud backup provider to prove they’ve earned the appropriate industry certifications to ensure that you’re maintaining compliance and keeping sensitive customer data safe.

Beyond industry compliance certifications, proper authorization and data integrity practices are also critical features to look for in a secure cloud backup solution.

What authentication and authorization procedures does your cloud backup provider have in place?

The ability to access, back up, and recover data from anywhere is one of the great benefits of having a  solution in the cloud. However, if a cloud solution is not architected properly, it can also expose your organization’s data to potential security breaches.

You should ensure that your cloud backup provider has proper authentication and authorization procedures in place is so that your data is secure and protected from being breached by unauthorized individuals. Part of those processes can include limiting access to the production systems (including applications, networks, databases, and servers) and customer data to only properly authorized employees. Physical access to the data center where the provider keeps the data must also be strictly regulated, as well as access to firewalls and network devices. Background checks and ongoing log and security reviews for the employees who have access to your data are also an important layer of security to look for.  

How does your cloud backup provider ensure the availability and completeness of your data?

The point of backing up data is that you can recover it if you ever need it – that’s why it’s critical that you seek out a cloud backup and restore solution that can ensure that your data is available for recovery in a complete, error-free state at all times.Industry standard SSL encryption practices and real-time data validation are also features which help ensure that data is complete and correct before being recovered from the cloud. Continuous and distributed monitoring of system availability and maintaining SLA compliance also help ensure data is available for recovery at any time.

While it’s good to be aware of your cloud backup provider’s security procedures, it’s also important to remember that data security starts with an organization’s internal practices first. Managing user roles, security training for staff and other procedures are at the heart of keeping data secure. Having a secure cloud backup provider is just an added layer of insurance, necessary to prevent serious data loss incidents -- and headaches.

IT Disaster Recovery: Are You Prepared?

Original post was written for Zetta and can be found on Zetta.com. 

Disaster can strike any organization at any time – whether it’s a single lost file or something major enough to make the news. Even if you already have a disaster recovery plan set in place, there are some vital questions you need to be able to answer in order to determine that you are really ready to face anything that comes your way.

Do You Have Offsite Backups? 

When it comes to disaster recovery, relying solely on onsite backups just won’t cut it. Offsite backups are a critical component of a disaster recovery plan in the event that a fire or earthquake destroys your onsite backups. Whether you send your backups offsite via tape or the cloud, it’s important that you are sending your backups offsite regularly. Knowing where they are at all times is also a must, so that you can get a better understanding of what the recovery process will look like.

Who is in Charge During a Disaster Scenario? 

Recovering from disaster isn’t just about getting data back, it’s about how you get it back. Figuring out everyone’s roles during a disaster scenario is an important component to recovery – not just because it’ll help everyone remain calm, but also because getting back to business will be a much smoother experience.

One of the roles that needs to be decided on is recovery project manager. Another important task is communicating with the rest of the departments in the company – who will take on this responsibility? Who will contact the backup vendor? This could all be done by one person, depending on business size – but establishing these roles before a disaster strikes will prevent a lot of headaches and panic.

Do you know your RTO and RPO?

Maybe you need a refresher on your RTO and RPO. Your RTO (Recovery Time Objective) is how long you can afford to be without your data. You need to know your RTO because being without your critical data for too long can not only hurt business, but even end it for good. Your RPO (Recovery Point Objective) is the amount of data you are okay with losing. Evaluating your RPO should show you how frequently you need to complete backups and send them offsite.

Have You Tested Your Disaster Recovery Plan Recently?

If your disaster recovery plan has started to gather a layer of dust and cobwebs, it might be time to take another look at it and test it. It’s not enough to just have a DR plan – you need to test it until you get the results you are looking for. After that, you have to make sure you are doing regular testing, since your RPO and RTO can change over time. Too many organizations are guilty of not testing their DR plans often enough and then facing unfortunate consequences as a result.

Putting together a disaster recovery plan is not just a one-off activity that you can set and forget – it is a dynamic process. As your business grows and changes, recovery planning needs to change along with it too. The last thing you want is to find out that your DR plan from last year no longer works in the middle of a disaster.

Top 5 Summer Perfumes

This post was originally written for The Makeup Obsession, a blog I run.

I’ve been meaning to put together a post like this for a long time, and now it is finally here! Are you excited? You should be!

These scents are arranged in no particular order (though #1 is my most used) – all of these perfumes  are absolutely lovely for summer! I did my best to try to have some variation in my selection, but for the most part you can tell that fruity/floral scents are my favorite thing.

5. Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue – This is definitely the cleanest scent out of them all. The most prominent notes are the cedar, lemon, and apple – this makes it super refreshing for very hot summer days. I will say that it’s also very strong and long lasting, so I’d be cautious with over-spraying. (If you don’t wanna shell out the money for this one, Victoria’s Secret sells a body mist in their Pink line called Fresh and Clean that smells almost identical to this. It’s great for post-workout!)

4. Giorgio Armani Acqua di Gioia – This is a bit like Light Blue except covered in sugar. Some people say it reminds them of a mojito because the lemon, sugar, and mint notes are most noticeable. I personally don’t find the sweetness overpowering and feel like it lasts all day. For those who want a lighter version, the scent is available in an awesome cooling, refreshing Hydrating Body Mist too. You can check out my rave review of Acqua di Gioia for more info on the scent.

3. Dior Addict 2 – I’m not sure whether this fragrance is discontinued or not, or how easy it is to find in stores. Pictured here is a tester I purchased on ebay (hence why the packaging looks a little funky). It’s definitely worth checking out! With notes like watermelon, grapefruit, and pomegranate, it’s like a fruit cocktail but for your skin. What I enjoy most about this perfume is the sweet musky dry-down it’s got going on. It’s another perfume that I don’t find to be overpoweringly sweet, and is definitely the fruitiest of the bunch. For being so fruity though, I definitely think there’s something sophisticated about it.

2. Coach Poppy Flower – This is another fruity floral that leans more towards the floral. It finally ended my quest to find a perfume which features rose that isn’t crazy powdery or “old-lady-like.” Other notes in this include peony, citruses, apricot, and lychee. I really like the combination of the rose with these fruits  because it gives it that refreshing sweetness that I like so much. It’s a very youthful and playful scent. (Side note: I found mine at a City Target hidden amongst a bunch of broken discounted make-up, and it was the only one, and SUPER discounted – SO random! Talk about a lucky buy! It was obviously meant to be.)

1. Versace Bright Crystal – Can you tell how obsessed I am with this fragrance based on my ginormous bottle? The most noticeable notes of this fragrance are the yuzu, peony, pomegranate, and ‘water notes.’ To me, spraying this perfume is like a breath of fresh air. It’s so invigorating and lovely, with, you guessed it, the right amount of sweetness ( it’s only slightly sweeter than Light Blue). The fragrance is indeed, bright and crisp – I just can’t get over it. It’s an EDT, so it’s light and lasts about 4 hours on my skin. For a while it was just my go-to work scent, but I started wearing it on my off-days because I fell in love with it. And in case compliments are important to you (who doesn’t love a compliment?) this is the only perfume that my boyfriend has ever consistently complimented me on. This is worth noting especially because he never compliments me on any other scent I wear, since he says he can barely tell the difference between my other perfumes. This scent has clearly made a wonderful impression on both of us. What more do you need?